888: panel May 14, 2017

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If you talk about a panel today, it would mean a thin board of something, perhaps metal or wood, or a group of people assembled to discuss something in particular. When the word was adopted into English from Old French, the word meant ‘piece of cloth’, going back to the Latin, 'pannus' which also meant ‘cloth’. Initially, this took on the meaning of ‘piece of parchment’ on which people would write. From here, it eventually gained the meaning of ‘list’ which then had the sense of ‘advisory group’. The other sense today of section of thin metal, wood, or even comic strips comes from the connotation to framing on the older meaning of panel, and soon enough this gained the sense of a thin surface-material that we have today.
This is not the only time that a word for 'cloth' has taken on another meaning, as this also happened with 'toilet'.

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